Be careful, very careful, Nassim is considered a flake by many and his theories equally nutty.

The best research about spirituality indicates that it is caused by a change in brain state. In particular, a brain network called the Default Mode Network (DMN) shuts down and another brain network called the Tasking Mode Network (TMN) then dominates.

The DMN is responsible for the unrelenting critical voice in our heads and is the default state for most humans. One could say that the DMN represents our ego – the voice that constantly talks to us every waking minute. When the DMN network shuts down four very specific things happen that are routinely characterized as spiritual.

Unlike Nassim, this phenomena is well documented by neroscience using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and has been tested on long-term mediators and other spiritual adepts. All that experience the phenomena described above have significantly reduced DMN brain activity.

The most succinct description of the above can be found in the following video by Gary Weber.

"They must find it difficult ... Those who have taken authority as the truth,
Rather than truth as the authority."
- Gerald Massey

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Okay, now THAT was an interesting warning you gave me… I’m not sure what I have to be careful about, but…

I took the time to not only watch this video with speaker discussing the regions of the brain with EEG and fMRI testing, including the more sophisticated paper of Andrews-Hannah, et al that he referred to (most of the others used N of 15 or unknown numbers) so that these identified regions could be seen as changing with self thought and what the brain does. All very interesting, especially when the regions of the brain could be activated (I think this is why DARPA and the DOD along with the tech sector invest in this kind of research)…

But, what parallels are you drawing to Haramein’s physics of spirituality, or his scientific papers of advanced models of a unified physics that extend from Einstein’s incomplete models of how physics can be mathematically modeled on space, time, energy and matter at the sub-atomic nucleon structure? Are you convinced that this exploration which includes studies that were verified at CERN’s particle accelerator are flaky?

I’m betting that the scientific community has a history of trying to present theoretical physicists as flakes. However, looking at the “more sophisticated” study that Gary Weber referred to (Andrews-Hannah, et al ANYAS, 2014), you’ll see that they saw no single region of the brain was completely dissociated from the remaining regions.

What makes the brain, which I find is a receptacle of afferent and efferent (A-E) signals, connect thought in various states?

I’ll go one better, TAT…. What makes you feel that we humans, in our three dimensional form, don’t receive a constant A-E pathway from the very universe from which we exist?

Thanks for the “warning”, but I believe in expanding thought, not limiting it because new thought is met with adversity by others… especially in the scientific community.

Anyone is free to believe or wish to believe in anything they may choose. I prefer to rely on what we can know empirically.

What we know empirically is that the brain changes state for some individuals and with that change of state the perceived experience is called spirituality. The common characteristics of spirituality found in literature were outlined above.

What I see many do is extrapolating past the empirical to the ontological. Those extrapolations are interesting, though without a sound basis in empirical experience. It is interesting that the Buddha was asked about ontology during his life and his reply was always we can’t know so stick to what we can know.

So back to Nassim. He may have interesting theories about physics; however, his stretch to ontology is just that a stretch. One is best to keep their beliefs and empirical knowledge firmly orthogonal until such time that new information suggests otherwise.

As of right now, we have sound empirical evidence for what changes in the brain with respect to what is called and experienced as spiritual. Anything more is interesting speculation.

"They must find it difficult ... Those who have taken authority as the truth,
Rather than truth as the authority."
- Gerald Massey

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Goodness… why respond with, “Anyone is free to believe or wish to believe in anything they may choose. I prefer to rely on what we can know empirically…” Thankfully, you used the word, “can”…

But, what a back-handed compliment, as this makes it look like what you rely on has been decided and empirically demonstrated, and what I referenced associates itself with a belief system.

I may just be a respiratory therapist relying in my earlier years the scientific theory, but as I recall, mathematical limits to predict what happens is not a closed subject, as much as it is a theory, which means that you follow the data and look at the way it is challenged, new theories abound. Einstein’s theory of relativity was rejected until his wife, who was a more advanced mathematician, advanced what is still considered his theory better.

Let me inform you of something… In science, what is theorized in regions of our brain is a science that is STILL in its infancy. How interesting that you act like it’s not.

Do you say this as a physicist? Just wondering, because I think it is odd when being warned to not believe something. You seem to not have a problem in telling people to do that. I have no problem with that approach, because….

Well, sure… I’ll stick with peer reviewed literature out of the Blue Books or scientific calls for abstracts, too, TAT!

No one’s saying that you or I shouldn’t. But everything I’ve read in this thread seems to indicate that the subject of my video on Nassim Haramein is somehow babbling of a con artist. Where’s your evidence of that? It’s certainly not in Gary Weber’s video!

When I asked for anything I could read to understand this, so far, I’ve gotten an Ad Hominem on him rather than any argument against what he has published in peer review journals, or introduced in abstracts with his peers. Instead of commenting on the subject matter of my OP, I get somewhat of a Red Herring by @alcina about this guy living rent free 20 years ago. Okay… I invited a comment on the meaning of that doozie.

Instead of supplying evidence of what Haramein has proposed in his research, I get something that is not related to my OP video at all, but another video you posted which relates to Gary Weber talking to a room full of people in a basement about diagnostic EEGs and fMRI brain diagnostics, as if it actually relates to this. I’m looking for the comparison and contrast to the actual theory, but what I read appears to be a pretty limited comparison on what we conceived as the conscious brain… That’s an apples to orange comparisons to try to claim that Haramein’s work is not even legitimate. What kind of point is that circular reasoning supposed to be making?

By all means, don’t take my word for what I believe is a challenging theory to re-defining the word “time” with “memory” within Einstein’s theory of relativity, or for that matter, any of Haramein’s earlier work… Go read it for yourself –

The Origin of Spin: A Consideration of Torque and Coriolis Forces in Einstein’s Field Equations and Grand Unification Theory

Haramein, N., and Rauscher, E. A. (2005). The orgin of spin: A consideration of torque and coriolis forces in Einstein’s field equations and grand unification theory. Beyond The Standard Model: Searching for Unity in Physics, 1, 153-168.

Posting studies that dismiss the spiritual experience really isn’t the focus of this group. Seems like your posts would be better received in the Atheist or Science groups and forums. Here we discuss spiritual experience with like-minded folks, not debunkers.

It’s not the “choir” here because no one is required to believe everything everyone else posts. But yours is most certainly the post of a materialist, and not only unhelpful but well outside of the scope of this group.

‘Cause that's what it would be. "Tea and cake or death? Tea and cake or death? Tea and cake or death!" Students with beards, (mimes demonstrating with picket signs) "Tea and cake or death! Tea and cake or death! Little Red Cookbook! Little Red Cookbook!" ‘Cause, "Cake or death?" That's a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that.

Holy cow! I used to share a house with this guy 20 years ago. Or rather, I shared a house with his girlfriend (and several others), and he managed to live there rent-free for awhile. He’s certainly upped his game. To remain polite, I’ll just say that the kindest words used to describe him back then were grifter and opportunist. I sent this video to one of the other housemates (who’s very much into “alternative” beliefs) and she replied: “Nasim’s esoteric stuff is not completely off, but his attempts to fudge math and astrophysics are abominable. I won’t even show it to J [another housemate, who’s now a maths prof] — this’ll work him up into a complete tizzy. … And you know L [his girlfriend] completely wrote his first book for him and he wouldn’t let her put her name on it. No credits all.”

Yeah, I know it’s hearsay, and I know a snake can shed its skin; but I’m with @thouartthat on being cautious about what he’s peddling.

This first part of his talk reminded me of Rupert Sheldrake‘s Theory of Morphic Resonance. I know he wrote a book on it, but I’m not much of a science-reader, despite a strong (layman’s) interest in it.

Morphic resonance is a process whereby self-organising systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems. In its most general formulation, morphic resonance means that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits. The hypothesis of morphic resonance also leads to a radically new interpretation of memory storage in the brain and of biological inheritance. Memory need not be stored in material traces inside brains, which are more like TV receivers than video recorders, tuning into influences from the past. And biological inheritance need not all be coded in the genes, or in epigenetic modifications of the genes; much of it depends on morphic resonance from previous members of the species. Thus each individual inherits a collective memory from past members of the species, and also contributes to the collective memory, affecting other members of the species in the future.

‘Cause that's what it would be. "Tea and cake or death? Tea and cake or death? Tea and cake or death!" Students with beards, (mimes demonstrating with picket signs) "Tea and cake or death! Tea and cake or death! Little Red Cookbook! Little Red Cookbook!" ‘Cause, "Cake or death?" That's a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that.

I see a lot of interesting posts by Haramein on Facebook. I am not educated enough on the subject to form an opinion, but what I admire is his authentic appreciation for geometry.

I’m just posting because I have a relevant observation about empirical thinking:

After encountering the intuitive (Uranus, Neptune, etc., everything that is not visible with the naked eye), a mind cannot return to its small, irrelevant position in the consensus reality (Saturn). I’ve had too many personal experiences with the numinous realm to fall into the illusion that my other senses are more “real.” Reality, as quantum physics so dramatically displays, is full of paradox, the most fundamental perhaps being that matter itself is full of empty space. A mind that accesses only its logical, empirical hemisphere is only half of a mind. As Hamlet said to Horatio, “There is more to heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Not everyone will connect as well to the astrological references, but the mind….. this is what we are really dancing with relating to these theories here… This is a dance that advances humanity based on what we so far have understood as reality (Saturn) to that of a wider perspective.

The square of Uranus to both Saturn and Pluto seems like a real challenge to we humans, in particular by January of this next year when the conjunction of Saturn (rules of current perception) to Pluto (transformation or re-birth of that perception) gives us perhaps a brand new meaning.

I love the fact that a curious mind like Haramein from his early school years, began to see what was thus far scientifically known, leading to doing the math with a continued quest, mathematical or otherwise of, “what if?”